We headed to Seoul Station to pick up our rental car – a really lovely Hyundai with all the mod cons – and drove straight out into full—on Seoul traffic, though it was moving rather slowly for miles. Despite giving me a chance to get used to the car, the slow roads were also very annoying as we headed out of town. But we think this must not be normal – maybe it’s people heading out on a Friday, or maybe it’s a public holiday: who knows?
Anyway, thanks to great satnav (unlike Japan), we aimed for Sochko on the east coast, via the essential motorway stop (complete with free crutches and wheelchairs):
Just in case some of you are wondering, ordering lunch in these places is not too challenging: one orders and pays at a machine with pictures and English language translations; you’re given an order number and then the food is freshly prepared for you. No photos this time – but next, I promise.
Sochko is a rather delightful place (ugly but appealing, according to the Rough Guide) curling round a lake which, we presume, links to the sea. There’s a charming walk around the lake with piped music (more suited to a cool cafe) and shaded seats which remind me a little of German strandkorbe – note Sue at the end of this little video:
There’s an excellent line in topiary, council planting and kitsch figures:
Despite the urban surroundings, the lake must be super-clean as we watched fish leaping out of the water and herons and cormorants hanging around to catch them:
As in Seoul, exercising machines are freely available outdoors and are used very well. We spotted this woman giving herself a great workout:
The Seoraksan national park, the country’s most popular, rises above the city although a rather weird structure dominates the skyline:
We found a place serving craft beer on our walk round the lake – the frist time since we arrived in Korea so we had to stop and order (weissbier for Miriam, IPA for Sue) – you order at the table on a machine so no need for a translation app. But, even though we’re getting used to the ‘no-human-interaction’ aspects of food-ordering,we were rather taken aback at this applying to delivery. Our beers arrived at our table via a friendly robot which waited patiently for Sue to pick them up:
Maybe there’ll be more beer tonight …
How fascinating! Sounds like it’s automated to a fault – I suspect that while initially it all feels fantastically efficient, charming even, eventually the lack of human interaction becomes wearing. Do robots need to be tipped?
No, no need to tip the robot server ( just a kind word and brief pat is usually fine). Actually, there’s no tipping in Korea or Japan which is quite refreshing I think. The ordering on screen is really helpful as language ( or our lack of Korean despite all those Netflix series) makes communication hard. There’s plenty of human interaction when the food is brought to the table – we’ve found people generally warm and friendly and very appreciative of nods and smiles…
Really weird! The robot thing… have YOU tried any of the exercise thingies? Gxxx
The robot didn’t feel weird just funny. In Bremen Ratskeller, they use very similar robots to take dirty dishes to the kitchen – this seemed almost noble in comparison… on the exercise things, yes, we’ve moved the odd bar and lifted things but more to see if we’d understood the Korean directions…can’t say much of it was what you’d call a workout.
Do you reckon Rough Guide’s description ‘ugly but appealing’ is just about right?
By the way do you need cash or is card use always available?
I think ugly is a bit harsh, certainly for the waterfront area though it has to be said most of the town is pretty grey and concrete. On the cash thing, most payments are by card but you need some cash to load money on the transport card you’ll be using in Seoul ( you buy the card in convenient stores and they’ll load money on it for you – you can then top it up at a metro station)
Ah, the robot waiters – if you can believe it, we were served by these in a shabby Best Western in a small town in the middle of rural BC! The women servers working alongside the robots were amusingly sniffy. Perhaps the owner was a Korean deciding to upgrade Canada?
Not completely sure ‘upgrade’ is the word – I’m with the sniffy women servers in BC! I can envisage some entertaining chaos with several robo- waiters gliding about and then freezing when sensing something in their way ( another robo-waiter, a chair, a handbag on the floor) – wouldn’t happen with humans ( well, most of them – wouldn’t necessarily apply to some of the people I’ve worked with in the past..)